‘Can I pick you up at half past seven tonight?’
Another nod.
‘Are you going to thump me in the ribs if I try to hug you right now?’
I nod again, but this time a giggle bursts out too.
It makes him grin and he holds both hands up like he’s surrendering, and his lips twitch into a smile. ‘Okay. Point taken. But I’m not giving up on us. Someone once told me that magic can happen at Christmas. Even the impossible.’
He salutes and turns to walk away, and it takes every ounce of my willpower not to run after him, throw my arms around him, and kiss him like there’s no tomorrow.
In that instant of thinking he might really have turned into a nutcracker, the thought of never seeing him again made me feel like I’d been punched in the chest … hard enough to wonder if learning to trust him again wouldn’t be so impossible after all. Stranger things have happened on Nutcracker Lane.
Chapter 19
Why am I so nervous? Why am I holding James’s hand on his parents’ doorstep? Why did I ever agree to this? It’s 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve and I have at least a thousand things that need doing to prep for the Christmas lunch tomorrow, but instead I’m looking up at a three-bedroom detached house in a pretty area, with a garden that doesn’t look as well kempt as it clearly once was.
His hand squeezes mine, and in my head I’m telling myself to extract my fingers and step away. Nothing changes the fact that he lied from the moment I met him, and that is not something that can be undone by even his grand gesture this morning. That’s the sensible corner of my brain. What I actually do is squeeze his hand back and look up to catch his eyes, and he gives me a muted smile as Mrs Claus opens the door.
She’s not actually Mrs Claus, of course, but that’s how I remember her from Nutcracker Lane, back in the Nineties when she and her husband used to be there every day. He’d walk from one end of the lane to the other, dressed as Santa, jingling a Christmas bell and “ho-ho-ho-ing”, and she’d hand out freshly baked cookies and stop to chat and take photos with children.
‘Nia!’ Instead of stepping back and letting us inside, she comes out onto the step and envelops me in a bear hug. ‘You have no idea how wonderful it is to finally meet you. Again. I know we’ve met before in years gone by, but lately, we’ve heard so much about you.’
It makes my heart swell as I hug her back. James has been talking about me. Maybe they’re as fed up of hearing about me as Stace is of hearing about James.
‘Come in, come in.’ When she releases me from the hug, she keeps hold of my hand and tugs me inside, calling into the house. ‘They’re here!’
It’s certainly the warmest welcome I’ve had in a while. She lets us into a burgundy red hallway with wooden floors and a festive rug running the length of it, and waits while we take our coats off and hang them on hooks by the door and leave our shoes underneath. She gives James a hug too, and takes both our hands and pulls us through the hallway, around a tight corner, and into a wide, spacious living room.
James’s dad is sitting at the dining table, his laptop in front of him and a pile of papers to one side. A mountainous stack of open files on his other side have slipped and scattered across the table.
‘I’m Judy, this is Raymond.’ She pauses. ‘Sorry, you already knew that, didn’t you?’
I did, but it’s been years since I saw them, so it’s nice to be reminded.
Judy’s got blonde-grey hair, smooth and straight to her shoulders, and she’s wearing a tinsel headband with a pair of Christmas trees sticking out like cat ears, and I’m glad I went for my understated silver headband with a small pair of elegant, sparkly reindeer antlers. I wasn’t sure what to expect, if this would be formal or posh, or if they’d be happy to see me or annoyed at me for blundering into their family Christmas Eve.
Raymond is wearing a Santa hat, which hides his head, bald from treatment, and they’re wearing matching his and hers Christmas jumpers depicting the bodies of Santa and Mrs Claus, so their own heads emerge from the neckline. It’s adorable in a way I hadn’t expected.
‘We’re so pleased you could come. Thank you for making time for us on Christmas Eve – you must have a lot to do.’ Raymond reaches out to shake my hand, and then quickly closes his open laptop and starts shuffling away paperwork.
Working. Even at this time on Christmas Eve night. Like James said he would be.
Judy disappears into the kitchen and refuses any help when I offer, and Raymond leans across to push a chair out for me, and I can’t help looking around as I sit down.
It’s a spacious living room, at least three times the size of mine, but there’s a cold and clinical feel to it. There’s a hearth but the real fire has been taken out and replaced by a screen that has digital flames waving on it, and in a corner by the floor-length curtains, stands a three-foot-tall plastic tree with bent branches, like someone’s just got it out of a box. There are no haphazard piles of presents stacked under it. The only lights are fibre-optic strands sticking out of the crushed branches, and the decorations are worn-looking plastic things fused to the tree itself.
James’s words about Christmas being a box-ticking exercise float through my head.
There are
